'Environment' Archive
Passions were running high in Congress last week as the Obama Administration’s “cap-and-trade” Energy Bill squeaked through the House of Representatives on a vote of 219 – 212. A visibly irate House Minority Leader, John Boehner, spent nearly an hour castigating the House leadership for both what was in the Bill, and for the limited amount of time that Congressmen were allowed to read it.
At the heart of the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill is the push for the US to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83% by 2050.
For the White House and Congressional Democrats the thrust of the Bill is for the US to lead global energy policy in a new direction by reducing carbon emissions, the main cause of the man-made contributions to global warming. In return, the Bill’s advocates argue, millions of green jobs will be created as the country inventively shifts to greater reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and develops more fuel-efficient automobiles.
The cap-and-trade mechanism allows for companies to honor government limits on emissions, by either meeting the goals by reducing output, or by buying emission credits from companies that produce less. The mechanism is designed to provide a market incentive to reduce pollution.
However, the Bill means one thing for certain — less use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal. And for Democrats representing coal-, gas-, and oil-producing states — as well as for global warming skeptics and “drill here, drill now” advocates on the Republican side of the aisle — the size, scope, and direction of the Bill was too much to take.
The Bill is “a pile of s**t,” Boehner told The Hill magazine, presumably not advocating the use of biomass (in the Bill) with his comment.
While the fate of this Energy Bill in the Senate is highly questionable, a little cool reflection is required.
The push for utilities to use renewables is not a brand new idea. A quiet revolution of renewable energy initiatives has been sweeping through the power sector of the US economy over the past five years. The country’s regulated utilities and the companies that own them have been steadily pushing energy conservation programs with their customers and turning over a small but increasing percentage of their energy plants to renewable energy sources — wind, solar, and biomass. All this in order to meet environmental regulations from previous administrations.
According to Carol Browner, the president’s Assistant for Energy and Climate Change, in 2009 renewable energy already accounts for 3% electricity production in the US, and is likely to double by 2012 or 2013 with or without this Bill. Utilities are already heavily engaged in the process. Pick up any Annual Report for any utility/power company — FLP Group, NRG Energy, Duke Energy, PacifiCorp, NV Energy, etc, — and you will find many paragraphs on renewable energy, and on conservation initiatives.
And the cap-and-trade mechanism is not a new concept. It has already worked well in the US, according to Paul Krugman. In the 1970s and 1908s, acid rain caused by the emission of sulfur and nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere, was a big problem. In 1990 the EPA introduced a cap-and-trade program to address it, and by the end of the decade utilities met compliance, greatly reducing SO2 emissions.
Big Oil, and Big Coal, and Chinese and Indian coal plant expansion notwithstanding — the future lies with clean energy, if the US has the will to make it happen.
BP handed all of us oil and gas analysts and statistical geeks a belated Christmas present last week when it published its Statistical Review of World Energy 2009. This year’s review, the 58th consecutive edition that BP has published, gives a great overview of the world’s energy resources and their utilization by country and region, and covers oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, hydroelectricity, and others.
There are lots of facts to be digested. For instance, according to the report, the US no longer consumes 25% of the world’s energy sources (a number often quoted by politicians and media outlets). In 2008 it only consumed 20.4%, a full 2% lower than in 2007. By contrast, China accounted for 17.7% of the world’s energy, up a dramatic 7.2% from 2007.
Let me stick with China for the purpose of this post, for behind the statistics of the country’s industrial expansion and increased energy consumption lurks a dark and troubling trend. According to the report, coal — the dirtiest, most polluting modern energy source — has been the world’s fastest growing energy source for six consecutive years, and China has accounted for 85% of global growth. The third largest economy in the world, China is also the largest polluter of greenhouse gases — with carbon dioxide, a byproduct of coal burning power plants, being the largest culprit.
Now, here is the really bad news. According to an Investor’s Business Daily report, China has plans to build 2,200 additional coal-fired plants between 2006 and 2020. And so while much of the developed world, under the Kyoto Protocol, is pushing its utilities to cut carbon emissions by switching to greener fuels, or introducing carbon-capture technologies, China is looking to add 12 coal burning plants a month for more than another decade. Sobering stuff.
But wait, it is worse than that. According to an environmental group report from a few years ago, coal mine fires in China burn about 200 million tons of coal each year. These include small illegal fires in the northern region of Xinjiang where local miners set fires in abandoned mines for heat in the cold climate. This translates to 360 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, not included in reported emissions statistics.
The silver lining in the growing cloud of carbon emissions? China is also the world’s leader in terms of building clean coal plants that use emission control equipment to remove the sulfur and nitrogen compounds that cause acid rain.
It is also building new plants that use extremely hot steam to power turbines and require less coal per plant. In addition, China is investing heavily in wind power resources and other renewables. But can the new technologies mitigate the pollution caused by the insatiable demand for power that its burgeoning population and economic engine demands? Unlikely.
Just behind China, that other Asian giant, India, is building a large number of coal plants as well.
Speaking for myself (as an energy analyst, stats geek, and greenie living Stateside), the global challenge of controlling carbon emissions and mitigating global warming trends is getting more difficult, not easier.
And that is an inconvenient truth.
Many momentous events took place in 1959. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and their communist guerrilla forces took over Cuba. A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet and went into exile in India. Khrushchev and Nixon had their “kitchen debate” in Moscow. The St. Lawrence Seaway was opened. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue.
In the world of business, Honda Motor opened its first overseas subsidiary, American Honda Motor, in a Los Angeles storefront. Hitachi established Hitachi America. And National Semiconductor was born.
National Semiconductor makes its headquarters in Silicon Valley, of course, but the company was started in Danbury, Connecticut, on May 27, 1959, and incorporated in Delaware. It was less than a year after the integrated circuit (IC) was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments, and not long after Fairchild Semiconductor’s Robert Noyce came up with an IC design that was easier to manufacture than Kilby’s design.
National Semi moved its headquarters from Connecticut to Santa Clara, California, in 1967, before Intel or Advanced Micro Devices were established, and about the time people started talking about the Santa Clara Valley, “the Valley of Heart’s Delight” that was covered with fruit orchards (Orchard Supply Hardware got its start there in 1931, and still makes its headquarters in San Jose), as this “Silicon Valley,” filled with companies making semiconductors on silicon wafers.
National’s been around for 50 years, but it’s not half as well known as AMD, Fairchild, or Intel. In fact, it bought Fairchild from Schlumberger in 1987, and then spun off the venerable chip company a decade later. National became famous in the industry for churning out low-cost logic devices, analog chips, and transistors. The company became infamous for a long-standing practice of reverse-engineering its competitors’ devices (an entirely legal yet costly and time-consuming way of designing ICs).
National pioneered many industry firsts in semiconductor products, yet it never really launched a home-run chip, like Intel did with the microprocessor, TI did with the digital signal processor, and ZiLOG did with the microcontroller. It was content to make huge volumes of microchips for its customers and never saw the need for a “National Inside” marketing campaign. National now is pinning hopes on its SolarMagic line of power management devices.
The company is noted for some long tenures among its CEOs. Charles (Charlie) Sporck led National for 25 years, from 1966 to 1991; he helped establish the SEMATECH research consortium. The incumbent CEO, Brian Halla, has held the job for 13 years, which is close to a lifetime appointment in hard-charging Silicon Valley.
Happy 50th, National Semiconductor Corporation! Here’s to 50 more.
Well, blow me down. Wind power is beginning to make a dent in the energy supply picture.
As someone who grew up on a rainy island beset by gales, and who has spent a lot of his adult life in Tornado Alley, I can attest to the power of wind. But in recent years the ability to convert wind into reliable electrical generation has moved from the developmental and speculative to a mainstream commercial business.
According to the Washington-based research organization Worldwatch Institute in a report published earlier this month, wind power now accounts for 1.5% of the world’s energy capacity, up from 0.1% in 1997. In 2008 alone, global wind capacity grew by 29%, or more than 27,000 MW, to 120,798 MW, a surge large enough to power an additional 27 million homes.
The US led the way, and passed Germany as the top wind power producer in 2008. American wind power capacity (led by the windswept state of Texas) increased by 50% to 25,170 MW, or some 21% of global capacity. Germany, with 23,903 MW of wind power leads Europe’s output of 65,946 MW of wind power, or 55% of worldwide capacity.
Even the slower-to-adapt Asian power markets are beginning to warm up to wind power. The Chinese government has already beaten its 2010 goal of 10,000 MW of installed wind power, and is aiming for 100,000 MW in place by 2020. Led by Tamil Nadu (which accounts for 44% of India’s wind power output), India had 9,465 MW installed at the end of 2008.
While most of the world’s wind capacity currently operating is found onshore, a growing number of installations are being built offshore, primarily off the coast of densely populated European nations. At the beginning of 2008 some five EU countries had operational offshore wind farms. At the end of the year that number was nine. More than 30,822 MW of offshore capacity is expected to be completed by 2015.
On May 12, 2009 the British government committed money that effectively gives the go ahead for the construction of the London Array, the world’s largest wind farm, with 341 turbines to be built off the coast of Kent. Led by E.ON and two other energy companies, the project was put in doubt when Royal Dutch Shell pulled its support earlier in the year. However, the British government stepped in with a financial aid package to save the day. Expected to be completed by 2012, the project promises to deliver power to 750,000 homes.
Despite the current economic downturn that is hurting investment financing for wind projects, the wind seems to be blowing fair for long term success. The growing pressure on utilities to reduce power plant carbon emissions is pushing wind power to the forefront of alternative power options. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, some 332,000 MW of wind capacity will be installed globally by 2013. Danish research firm BTM Consult goes even further and projects that by 2017 global wind power installations could account for almost 6% of the world’s power generation.
It might be time to revisit the Pickens Plan.
Applied Materials was and is the world’s biggest producer of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. That industry is in a severe downturn, going back more than a year, due to the travails of its primary customers in the semiconductor industry. The chip makers are suffering because people aren’t buying as many gadgets and other electronics as they were in 2007, so fewer chips are sold, and fewer machines for making chips are ordered and installed.
Applied’s 2Q09 results are a revelation. Sales in the company’s Silicon segment were $260 million for the quarter. Not bad, eh? Well, no, not when you see that sales in that segment a year ago were nearly five times that amount — $1.27 billion.
Here’s the real kicker — sales in Applied’s Energy and Environmental Solutions segment were $357 million for the quarter, more than the Silicon segment, traditionally the company’s bread and butter. Energy and Environmental Solutions includes Applied’s SunFab line of equipment for making solar energy modules. Sales in that segment quadrupled year over year, although the product line is unfortunately unprofitable.
Solar energy still has a long way to go to become a mainstream source of electrical power generation, but many companies are still heavily investing in it. Suntech Power Holdings, a Chinese producer of photovoltaic solar cells and modules, this week reported it will build its next plant in the US. Renewable energy technology may be the economic salvation so many leaders are looking toward.